Freescale bringing the heat to Intel.
Freescale, a small processor company, is set to announce a new chip today. The chip an i.MX515 will run on netbooks and low cost laptops designed for basic computing tasks. Right now Intel has a commanding lead in the netbook segment with their Atom processor making it an uphill battle for Freescale. Freescale hopes to push the cost of notebooks running their processor to $199, down from the current $299 of machines powered by Atom. They hope in undercutting Intel, they can gain a sizable market share fairly quickly. Along with showcasing the i.MX515, they will also be demonstrating Wi-Fi wireless networking provided by Pegatron, a spin of of Asus at CES this week. One other goal of Freescale besides lowering prices is to improve battery life, which with the i.MX515 is claimed to be around 8 hours. However, the size of battery required to attain that long life is not stated so for now we have to sit and wait for CES to tell us more. One last interesting note is that these processors will only be in Linux based netbooks as they do not support Windows. That decision could go either way. A majority of netbooks are adopting Linux because of lower system requirements which in return are cheaper to build and sell, as well as being more frugal with battery life. With the dominance Intel has been enjoying it will be nice to see a fresh face in the market.
Author: Mike Norris
visit my websiteGadget lover, smartphone collector, and beer connoisseur. I've been writing about gadgets for three years now and loving every minute of it. Outside of the digital landscape, I enjoy being active outdoors. I'm always up for a good conversation, so feel free to drop me a line!
